This specification relates to information presentation.
Resources that include content can be provided over the Internet to various user devices. Many of these resources include content item environments in which additional content can be displayed. Typically the content of the resource is provided by a publisher, while the content items displayed in the content item environments are provided by third parties. For example, a web page can include slots in which sponsored content items, such as advertisements, can be presented. These slots can be defined in the web page or defined for presentation with a web page, for example, along with search results or other content provided by the publisher.
There are different types of content item environments that can be used to display third-party content items in a resource provided by a publisher. Two such environments are script environments and in-line frame environments, or “iFrame” environments. In script environments, the content of the content item environment slot are also considered to be part of the content of the resource, and thus the content is determined to belong to the domain of publisher that served the resource. In iFrame environments, however, the content of the content item environment slot, if it is determined to belong to the domain of another entity, such as an advertisement server, are not considered to be part of the content of the resource.
The type of content item environment used by a publisher may be of interest to advertisers and/or advertisement management systems that serve such advertisements on behalf of the advertisers. In particular, same-domain environments can programmatically communicate, but such communications are not readily facilitated between cross-domain content item environments. Some serving features for particular advertisements may require access to the content of the resource, and thus serving these particular advertisements in iFrame environments may lead to sup-optimal performance. Likewise, advertisers serving expandable advertisements may desire to run such advertisements only in script environments to minimize non-expansion impression rates.